Oklahoma! as Myth____________________________________________

Oklahoma! is a modern myth
that uses older myths as its raw material
but puts them together in its own way.
Most essentially, it uses the complex myth found in the Bible.

We see this in the setting and society it presents
which is close to a paradise on earth
-- an unfallen world that is a step above
the claw and talon of society and nature
as we know them.

The Adam and Eve in this place
must deal with what the original couple had to deal with --
temptation.

Aunt Eller is an old wise woman.
As an aunt, she is off to the side, so to speak,
instead of being a mother with direct authority
over Laurey and this society.

Jud is the serpent in paradise who lives
in a dark chthonic space,
much like a small underworld, which is
one of the reasons Curly refers to him as a snake.
Like the Devil, he is anally dirty
and is also referred to by Curly as a rat,
another animal associated with the Devil.
He is a seducer, if not a very good one,
and a force against life. Even his name,
Jud "Fry" calls up the idea of Hell.

Jud, as the Devil, tries to turn the virtuous maiden, Laurey,
to the dark side. In her dream, he subjects her
to a traditional Christian temptation and attack by demons
in an attempt to get her to fall from her paradise
into death-in-life, instead of falling into nature and history.

Her double's journey through the dream
is a Christian journey through Hell,
with its red streaked sky, where Jud reigns
as a condensation of Satan and Dionysus with his maenads.
The dream world even includes a devilish looking female
with a headdress that looks like a set of horns.

That, in turn, calls up associations to the cattle of the ranchers
with, perhaps, a not-so-distant allusion
to the cults of bulls and cattle
in the pagan and nonChristian religions
of the ancient world.

The battle that goes on in the dream
is to seduce Laurey, who is both innocent and a virgin,
into becoming a fallen woman
who will join the cult prostitutes
in idolatry and the worship of a pagan God.

Curly has his own, briefer, journey through the underworld,
when he enters Jud's hovel,
foreshadowing Laurey's more extensive journey.

Although, the Peddler wouldn't seem to be related to this imagery,
in fact he is another representation of the slyness of the Devil.
He too is referred to as a rat, by his competitor, Will.
And he tries to seduce Annie the way Jud tries to seduce Laurey,
in a way that would change her forever,
since, even though Annie has trouble saying no,
it appears she is still a virgin.

Just as Jud governs the realm of the demonic dream
with the promise of forbidden pleasures,
so the Peddler is the bearer of idealized dreams
with a wagon full of tempting luxuries
and pornography for Jud. He is the smooth talker
who can make anything sound like paradise.

  These two snakes try to seduce their respective virgins
with dreams, in a way that will interfere
with the planting and harvesting of the next generation.
Jud is infertile in the sense that he is a force of excrement
and anti-life who can only produce a generation of hate,
while the Peddler has no intention of raising children.

Jud also represents various gothic monsters,
associated with the underworld.
As alluded to earlier, he is Frankenstein
-- an unnatural creation of death-in-life that runs amok
after Laurey activates him by agreeing to go with him to the social.
He is a vampire trying to drain life from the living.
And Curly and Jud, as a normal and evil man,
are Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

In the end, the undead Jud is killed
with a blade instead of a stake through the heart.
He is dispatched to the earth and the realm of death
from whence he came after he tries to annihilate
the life-affirming newlyweds with Hellish fire
during a fertility ceremony in which they stand on a haystack
and celebrate their entry into the cycle of reproduction.

Thus, as in many gothic stories,
the movie shows us a character -- Laurey --
who is haunted by an undead creature
that embodies her own fear of life and sexual adulthood
at the time she should be ready to marry.

In the end, as she and the other characters pair off,
life conquers death
and the planting of the seed for the next generation begins.

For this to happen, Laurey must be exiled from the timeless paradise
and illusion of her prolonged childhood.
Having journeyed into Hell and been forced into a demonic wedding
where she is pursued by those who sin against life,
she is more than ready to escape
into marriage and procreation.
She leaves the timeless realms of both childhood and the dream
and agrees to fall into the realm of history and change
so she can take her place in the progressive renewal of society. 

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Curly, who is Adam,	loves Laurey, who is Eve,	but she is tempted by Jud, who is the snake, who would cause her to fall into Hellish evil rather than into a natural life.

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